W. H. Smyth
The Sailor's Word-Book
An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664155030
Table of Contents
A DIGEST OF SEA TERMS AND PHRASES.
INTRODUCTION.
What's in a word? is a question which it is held clever to quote and wise to think unanswerable: and yet there is a very good answer, and it is—a meaning, if you know it. But there is another question, and it is, What's a word in? There is never a poor fellow in this world but must ask it now and then with a blank face, when aground for want of a meaning. And the answer is—a dictionary, if you have it. Unfortunately, there may be a dictionary, and one may have it, and yet the word may not be there. It may be an old dictionary, and the word a new one; or a new dictionary, and the word an old one; a grave dictionary, and the word a slang one; a slang dictionary, and the word a grave one; and so on through a double line of battle of antitheses. Such is assuredly matter for serious cogitation: and voluntarily to encounter those anomalous perplexities requires no small amount of endurance, for the task is equally crabbed and onerous, without a ray of hope to the pioneer beyond that of making himself humbly useful. This brings me to my story.
Many years ago, I harboured thoughts of compiling a kind of detailed nautical vade mecum; but a lot of other irons already in the fire marred the project. Still the scheme was backing and filling, when the late Major Shadwell Clerke—opening the year 1836 in the United Service Journal—fired off the following, to me, unexpected announcement:—
"A Nautical Dictionary, or Cyclopædia of Naval Science and Nomenclature, is still a desideratum. That of Falconer is imperfect and out of date. We have heard that the design of such a work has been entertained, and materials for its execution collected, by Captain W. H. Smyth, whom, we earnestly recommend to prosecute an undertaking of such promise to the service of which he is so experienced and distinguished a member—it could not be in more competent hands."
This broad hint must have been signalled by the gallant Major in the way of a stimulating fillip, and accordingly it aroused considerable attention. Among those who were excited by the notification was my friend Captain Basil Hall, who wrote to me from Paris a few days afterwards—13th of January, 1836—in these words:
"I read a day or two ago, in the United Service Journal, that you had some thoughts of preparing a Nautical Dictionary for publication; and from your connection with that journal, or at least your acquaintance with our friend the editor, I am led to fear that the report may be true. You will understand the use of the word fear when I tell you that, for nearly three years, my own thoughts have turned in the same direction, and I have been busily preparing for a task to which I meant to buckle to with a will, and to which I meant to devote some four or five years of exclusive diligence. What I am anxious to know, as soon as may be, is the fact of your having undertaken a similar work, or not. For I assure you I am not so foolish, nor so insensible either to my own peace of mind or my own reputation; nor am I so careless of your good opinion and regard, as to enter the lists with you. I repeat, neither my feelings nor my judgment would permit me in any way to cross your hawse, if indeed, as I too much fear, you have got before me. There is one other man in the service besides yourself, and only one, with whom no consideration would induce me to enter into competition—and that is Beaufort—but his hands, I presume, are full enough, and I had somehow imagined yours were too. So much so, that you were one of the first men I meant to consult on my return to England, and to beg assistance from. I should not have minded the competition of any one else, but I am not so vain as to suppose that I could do the thing as well as either of you—and therefore, even if I were not restrained by motives of personal friendship, I should never dream of risking my reputation for professional, scientific, or literary attainments by a struggle in which I should certainly be worsted."
To this hearty and laudatory interpellation, an immediate reply